creative diaries 22 : jane riley

I was lucky enough to meet Jane Riley in person a few years back at Designer Vaca. She’s down to earth, sweet, and is a wildly talented designer, too! In fact, if you’ve ever visited Clementine Daily or Bleubird’s blog, you’ve already seen her work. ;) It’s all very well thought out and nice on the eyes! For this creative diary entry, she was to focus on one single work day and answer a few simple questions about the good, the bad, and the inspiring. This is what happened, truthfully.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING THAT YOU DID THIS MORNING I woke up at 5am to babies crying for me. My oldest (2 yrs) was crying because he was hungry and needed to go to the bathroom. My youngest (1 yr) was upset because he has a cold and wanted to be held. I gave the oldest a piece of bread and held my baby in a big chair in the corner of their room until they decided they could go back to sleep for another half hour… then we were all up at 6AM and racing to get ready for the day.

DESCRIBE ONE CHALLENGE THAT YOU FACED I have a client whose project has been dragging on for a while. I am usually so good at keeping clients on task and making sure that we hit deadlines but this one really took some crazy turns that I didn’t anticipate. Content wasn’t ready, multiple revisions were made outside of the scope of the project, etc. I’m totally not complaining about this at all, because it happens and I want other designers to know that this is pretty normal and not a reason to feel like a failure – it’s just a challenge. Today I had to re-write the original invoice / contract in order to postpone the last portion of the project until an unknown later date when the client will hopefully have all of their content together. The challenge was deciding if closing this project and starting again at a later date was the right thing to do. It felt really good to me so that is what I decided would be the best plan of action. DESCRIBE ONE ACCOMPLISHMENT I was able to connect with a super cool client and put them on my 2015 calendar! Wahoo! It’s always validating when fun interesting creative people choose to work with you!

DESCRIBE ONE THING YOU LEARNED I don’t know if I learned this today – more like I realized today that I have learned this over the last few months: I really love working and being busy. I used to complain about having too much to do and working too much but the truth is that I love it. I feel antsy and restless when I’m not being productive. It feels really good to have a job that is both fun and challenging. I realized today that I have come to really LOVE being productive and working hard. WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU DID FOR WORK Before I go to bed at night I usually read over emails that came in during the afternoon. I don’t work in the afternoon because I am taking my kids to the park or to the zoo or running errands with them and don’t want to divide my attention. So before I go to bed I read through all of the afternoon emails, I get some of the little things done, or send quick responses to clients that need to hear from me and then I make a to-do list for the morning. If I don’t write stuff down I will totally forget.

AND JUST FOR FUN, DID YOU EAT ANYTHING TASTY I snuck a few pieces of my kids halloween candy while they weren’t looking. :) We are currently using it as potty training incentive but I give my self a piece when the day gets rough! portfolio / blog / twitter / instagram
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